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Thread: Income Inequality in America

  1. #151
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    I don't think we have been self-governing since the 16th amendment.
    16th Amendment has little to do with it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmazonTania View Post
    16th Amendment has little to do with it.
    16th is when we all started working for the government.

    ...In short, sovereignty is a matter of taxation; the more taxation
    the more sovereignty. Conversely, the immunity of the
    people is in proportion to the amount of their wealth they
    can keep out of the government's hands. It follows, then,
    that the Sixteenth Amendment, which gives the government
    a prior claim on all the production of the country, puts
    the government in the way of acquiring as much power as
    it is possible for a government to exercise; that is, under our
    revised Constitution it is possible for the government to
    attain absolutism. The introduction of income taxation destroyed
    the original concept of the Union—as consisting of
    autonomous states, in which political power was a concession
    from sovereign citizens—just as effectively as if it had
    been done by a foreign invader.

    The indisputable fact of the Sixteenth Amendment is its
    socialism; it denies the right of private property....

    In short, sovereignty is a matter of taxation; the more taxation
    the more sovereignty. Conversely, the immunity of the
    people is in proportion to the amount of their wealth they
    can keep out of the government's hands. It follows, then,
    that the Sixteenth Amendment, which gives the government
    a prior claim on all the production of the country, puts
    the government in the way of acquiring as much power as
    it is possible for a government to exercise; that is, under our
    revised Constitution it is possible for the government to
    attain absolutism. The introduction of income taxation destroyed
    the original concept of the Union—as consisting of
    autonomous states, in which political power was a concession
    from sovereign citizens—just as effectively as if it had
    been done by a foreign invader.

    The indisputable fact of the Sixteenth Amendment is its
    socialism; it denies the right of private property....

    First comes the confiscation under cover of
    law; with confiscation comes power, or the means of employing
    policemen (as well as publicists and lawyers) to
    compel or induce people to do that which they would not
    do if left alone and in possession of their wealth; power feeds
    on power, and so we have the Welfare State, or the complete
    denial of the sanctity of the individual and the glorification
    of the amorphous god, State....
    @ Chodorov, "THE SOVEREIGN TAX-COLLECTOR," One is a Crowd
    Last edited by Chris; 09-13-2013 at 09:59 PM.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    The income tax was actually first created in 1861 under Lincoln to fund the civil war, though it was temporary. When it became permanent it was relatively tiny. You had you be a millionaire in order for it to effect you, and even when you've made the mark it effected you in a very small way. It wasn't until the 30's when everyone started working for the Federal Government.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmazonTania View Post
    The income tax was actually first created in 1861 under Lincoln to fund the civil war, though it was temporary. When it became permanent it was relatively tiny. You had you be a millionaire in order for it to effect you, and even when you've made the mark it effected you in a very small way. It wasn't until the 30's when everyone started working for the Federal Government.


    OK, so it's roots go back further!! It's probably inevitable, just the nature of government. The founders tried to put it in check, but you probably cannot.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmazonTania View Post
    The income tax was actually first created in 1861 under Lincoln to fund the civil war, though it was temporary. When it became permanent it was relatively tiny. You had you be a millionaire in order for it to effect you, and even when you've made the mark it effected you in a very small way. It wasn't until the 30's when everyone started working for the Federal Government.
    I would place it at 1937- after FDR's threat to stack the Supreme Court. After that, SCOTUS gave a pass to all New Deal laws that expanded the powers of the federal government and eroded the concept of federalism.

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    What I'm getting at is more pernicious than loss of federalism to federal government. Chodorov develops the 16th amendment theme in another essay, "In Defense of Theives," in One is a Crowd. Keep in mind this was written in the 1950s...

    ...Forty years ago it
    would have been laughed at; it would never have been
    thought up. For, in those days it was taken for granted that
    the politician was a menial in the employ of Big Business.
    The idea that the hireling could "put the heat on" the men
    who made him would have been unthinkable.

    The incidence of power has changed, and that is the point
    of the Wall Street rumor. When you read Gustavus Myers's
    History of the Great American Fortunes, or Lincoln Steffens's
    account of the muckraking era, in his Autobiography,
    you learn how Big Business made presidents, bought legislators
    and dictated judicial decisions. Up to early in this
    century, according to these historians, the political machinery
    of this country was an adjunct of monopoly. If a franchise
    was wanted, or a grant of land or a lucrative contract,
    the thing to do was to pack the legislative or executive
    branches with men of the right kind of integrity. There might
    be a fight between one gang of privilege-hunters and another,
    between a Gould and a Vanderbilt, and the fight
    might reach the sacred legislative halls, but the respective
    agents of these men simply carried out orders; they rarely
    presumed to do otherwise. Their recompense was the security
    of political preferment, so long as they remained dutiful
    servants, with participation in the loot if they were particularly
    useful.

    ...This turn of events indicates that Big Business has lost its
    dominance over Politics. The bureaucrat is in the driver's
    seat. The successors of the robber barons of the nineteenth
    century operate on sufferance; the obsequiousness of their
    lobbyists in Washington is pitiful to behold....

    ...Let's put aside any moral evaluation of the old time
    method. We can concede that the egregious railroad landgrants
    amounted to thievery; the right of the people to the
    use of this land was abrogated without any warrant in ethics,
    and the operations of the Hills and the Harrimans, in cahoots
    with servile legislators, were little more than a confidence
    game. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that these men did
    build railroads. Their motive was profit, to be sure, even
    though they prated about building an American empire.
    But, production has to precede profit. They had to provide a
    transportation service. What they got from their elected
    servants was an exclusive privilege, enabling them to wangle
    a monopoly profit out of the users of the railroads, more than
    they could have got out of competitive business.

    ...As for the public servants who served these robber barons,
    what else could they do? Despite the delusion of "clean politics,"
    the only use to which political power can be put is the
    creation of privilege. Theoretically, government can be
    "good," but only if its functions are restricted to the protection
    of life and property; but, to that purely negative occupation
    rulers have never confined themselves, and there is
    some doubt that the ruled would be satisfied with that kind
    of government In practice, the art of ruling settles down to
    the granting of economic privileges to a few, to the disadvantage
    of the many; the beneficiaries of these privileges are
    either the politicians themselves or their supporting patrons....

    ...We hear less and less about the "system" these days, and
    the enthusiasm for "clean" politics has given way to the worship
    of power. Liberality in the diffusion of privilege has
    raised the politician to the pinnacle of high-priest while the
    increase of taxation has made us more and more and more
    dependent upon his beneficence....

    ...The diffusion of privilege in all directions had the marvellous
    result of freeing the politician from vassalage to any one
    gang. In the old days he might play one group against another,
    he might even take bribes from both; but, after he had
    befouled himself he was no longer a free agent; he was a tool.
    Long before 1933, such reforms as the direct election of
    senators and woman suffrage had weakened the hold that
    Big Business had upon him, and the prohibition movement
    showed him that even organized religion was amenable to
    political reason. The New Deal, of course, completely liberated
    him from his old dependency; for here was in one
    package all the "social legislation" needed to build up a supporting
    cast of diverse interests. Now he could flaunt the
    union crowd in the face of the haughty Union League; the
    railroad magnates took a secondary place in his loyalty after
    "parity" had won him the hearts of the farmers; reciprocal
    trade treaties put in his hand a weapon against arrogant
    protectionists; there was no "economic royalist" powerful
    enough to stand up to the powers of intervention he had
    acquired by reform.

    To be exact, the unshackling of the politician began in
    1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment handed him the economic
    key. After that, as exigencies permitted, he could buy
    the loyalty of the jobless with sustenance, or the support of
    entire sections by voting it gratuities supplied by other sections.
    This limitless income meant bigger contracts and more
    liberal subsidies with which to buy the adulation of industrialists,
    bankers and housewives. Now he could be the bribegiver,
    rather than the bribe-taker. The income tax completely
    changed the character of the American politician.

    ...In this scheme of things, he becomes indispensable
    to Big Business, Big Education, Big Unionism, Big Anything.
    Enterprise of any kind cannot manage without him, and his
    services—at an honorarium, not a bribe—are sought for.
    However, this "clean" politician cannot bring to the marketplace
    a single good, any more than his unwashed predecessor
    could....

    It has come to pass, then, that those who once danced to
    the fiddles of the Empire Builders now call the tunes....
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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